Screening Conditions

Screening Conditions: two new series of film and discussion events for 2012

- GREAT VALUE lower prices for 2012
- Two new themes, Eros and Thanatos (Spring) Horror: The Dark Side of the Unconscious (Summer)
- Taking place at ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts

Are you interested in seeing cinema through a psychoanalytic lens?

At the end of the 19th century, cinema and psychoanalysis revolutionised ways of seeing the self. They both continue to challenge concepts of the human psyche.

Screening Conditions invites the public to take part in a stimulating conversation between psychoanalysis and cinema. Watch a curated programme of high quality, alternative films followed by a lively discussion with eminent psychoanalysts and film scholars. Each series screens four films that span countries, decades and genres, but are linked by a common theme.

NEW lower prices for 2012:

Single session £19.95
One series: £69 YOU SAVE £10.80 so it’s only £17.25 per session
Two series: £119 YOU SAVE £40.60 so it’s only £14.88 per session

For full-time students and unwaged:
Single session: £9.95
One series: £32 YOU SAVE £7.80 so it’s only £8 per session
Two series: £56 YOU SAVE £23.60 so it’s only £7 per session

Spring Series: 29 January – 25 March 2012
Eros and Thanatos: Love and Death in Film
Discussions will be led by practising psychoanalyst Andrea Sabbadini with Peter Evans

29 Jan Ossessione (Luchino Visconti, 1943) A young drifter falls for a married woman and they plot to murder her husband.

26 Feb The Criminal Life of Archbald de la Cruz (Luis Bunuel, 1955) A darkly comic story of a would-be serial killer with a sexual obsession with murder.

18 March Le Boucher (Claude Chabrol, 1970) An unlikely relationship forms between a schoolmistress and a butcher – but how will she handle her suspicions when a series of murders takes place in their provincial town?

25 March Matador (Pedro Almodovar, 1986) An ex-bullfighter and a female lawyer, both turned on by killing, and a young man who confesses to murders he didn’t commit are drawn together in this mix of black humour, melodrama, fantasy and violence.

Summer Series: 29 April – 1 July 2012
Horror: The Dark Side of the Unconscious

Discussions will be led by practising psychoanalyst Andrea Sabbadini with Donald Campbell

29 April Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) Whale's 1930s adaptation of Shelley's novel intelligently explores the world of the obsessive scientist and his monster alter-ego.

20 May Little Otik (Jan Svankmajer, 2000) A combination of live action and stop-motion animation is used in this surrealist retelling of a folk story in which a childless couple take a tree stump for a baby, only for it to come alive and grow an insatiable and cannibalistic appetite.

17 June Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2001) Set against a backdrop of fascist Spain, a young girl escapes into her own fantasy world which is both captivating and nightmarish.

1 July Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008) An isolated and bullied boy forms a friendship with a mysterious young girl whose appearance in town coincides with a horrifying series of murders.

About the speakers

Andrea Sabbadini is a practising psychoanalyst and is the Director of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival and of the Screening Conditions series of films at the ICA.

Peter Evans was Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. He is currently writing a BFI Classic volume on Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind.

Donald Campbell is a practising psychoanalyst and past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He has written on the subjects of violence, suicide, shame, child sexual abuse, adolescence and horror films.